Cornucopia, or the Horn of Plenty, is about continuous plenitude. One of the best-known stories about the corcucopia involves the infant god Zeus who was nurtured by a goat goddess who unconditionally nursed him with her milk. One day, by accident, one of her horns broke. The sudden mishap gave rise to something transformative – the horn started to provide an uninterrupted flow of supplies to the rest of the world.
Now and then, it takes a disruption, in whatever form, to prompt a change in regular systems — Delia Prvački’s work Cornucopia—of abundance and giving was set aside last year in 2020 for an exhibition, against the backdrop of global unrest and the pandemic. The result of five ongoing decades of making, the work has existed in its various fragments since the 1970s; the horn motif reveals itself here again in about 30 titled works. Viewed today, the work is made more poignant for viewers to steal a glimpse of hope through the surplus of nature’s perpetual giving. Expanding from a singular horn motif into manifold incarnations, it is a work that is grounded in possibilities. Whether the shape would ultimately be a tool, a symbol, or an intuition, it maps onto various mythologies, each of them coded and expanded within their own narratives in this exhibition.
Venue: Earl Lu Gallery, Institute of Contemporary Arts, LASALLE’s McNally Campus
When: 18 Sep - 30 Oct 2021, 12noon - 7pm Mon–Sat (closed on Sun and public holidays)
By: LASALLE College of the Arts
